European_CruiseGirl

Perhaps they don’t even want them to sign? Business as usual (unfortunately) in corporate world. Get rid of the higher paid professionals and keep/hire more juniors to do these tasks…

You can only reserve each speciality restaurant once through the NCL app. If and when you want to reserve the same restaurant twice (for example Le Bistro) for your cruise the second reservation must be booked via calling or chatting with NCL. If you try to reserve the same restaurant twice through the app it does exactly what you are experiencing op. You can start to book it but your cart will remain empty. Chatting with NCL was quick and easy for me. They made the additional reservations for me in no time.

I am so sorry this happened to you op. And of course to others on this cruise. While ship happens and due to weather related reasons you sometimes cannot get to a tender port it is always a sad situation when a cruiseline cancels a port in advance. Particularly if the reason would be bad scheduling of the cruiseline. It will be interesting to see what happens for cruises around very late Feb/early March. It looks like this now for 3/4 for GSC (see pic below) https://cruisedig.com/ports/great-stirrup-cay-bahamas/arrivals More ”Due to unforseen reasons” emails coming? Can CSG really handle 3 ships… if not… NCL - there is nothing unforseen in a situation where you yourself schedule 3 (or even 2) of your ships to your own private island for the same day and then realize you have gone over the max capacity that your own island can handle.

Increasing the daily service charge. And then informing within one month about reducing the services given to pax. Very business savvy move and great PR NCL - not.

There are boarding groups. The earlier you get to the port the better boarding group you’ll get and the faster you’ll be on the ship. That being said we usually plan to arrive to the port around 12:30PM so that the lines have cleared up and we can basically walk through security and check in and just get to the ship very fast without waiting in lines 😊

If indeed on a specific day there is only one ship (or no ships at all) at Amber Cove NCL will be able to stop there. However two Carnival Corp ships showing at Amber Cove -> NCL large ships (read = anything else than NCL Sky) gets booted out from Puerto Plata because they won’t stop at Taino Bay and Amber Cove will be full.

Not a problem with NCL if there are just seats available. Teppanyaki is hugely popular and seats are limited. Make the reservation asap when the bookings open. One of you will make the reservation through the NCL app for 8 people. On NCL you don’t need to choose with whom you want to dine or add specific people to your restaurant reservation (like for example on RCI). You just choose the number of seats required when you make the restaurant reservation online. If on the app you don’t see the possibility to reserve for 8 (sometimes it ends at 6) just chat with NCL or call them and book the 8 seats 😊 I have found the NCL chat people to be very efficient and the wait time for chat service seems to be zero to none. Then on the ship you just show up at the restaurant and they will check everyones key cards for dining packages and ask each person if he/she wants to use the package. Ps. When making dining reservations make the reservation for fixed price restaurants (Teppanyaki, Moderno) first and only after that to possible a la carte restaurants.

NCL doesn’t seat you with others unless you specifically ask them to. If there wouldn’t be a two top available when you go to the main dining room you’d either wait a while (not very long) if one is becoming available soon or they’d just simply give you a table for four for just the two of you.

Oh how I wish we could get an update for this thread. Was it a mistake by NCL? System error? Or was it a question of instead of going to the Haven Bar, ordering a lot of room service drinks delivered to a Haven suite from the Haven bar via the butler and the pax thinking those were included too? Or something else.

I am sure that someone more knowledgeable will answer this. However one problem that I can see here is that the cruise is ending in the UK which is a non EU country. And now you’d want to disembark at an EU country. That could cause all kinds of additional problems.

Just as a back up (with a really last minute schedule) there would be a very early Delta flight available from Cedar Rapids via ATL to Orlando on Friday 12/30. Arrives to Orlando at 11:55AM. It is very tight and obviously includes a risk too as it is not non-stop. But it could be a backup. Price for 2 persons around $1400 and you can upgrade to fully refundable main cabin with $110/pp which would mean that if you get on your southwest flight on Thursday you can just cancel this and get your money back.

And this is my main gripe. It is of course understandable that change happens and if you buy a beverage package of any kind lets say 1 year before a cruise you can expect that they might change something. But constant changes occurring several times in just a couple of months and always removing something and making the package less appealing. That’s just simply crazy and a bad way of running a business. If you want to keep your customers happy you cannot make constant downgrading changes to your product that you already sold to them. Can you do it? I am sure NCL lawyers have made it possible with multiple disclaimers here and there. Should you do it? No.

NCL gives you all the Haven benefits if you win a bid to a Haven cabin.

A change has ocurred recently. It states: 1. no Moet 2. only one bottle per person during dinner 3. bottles must be consumed in the dining room Just adding the link to 12/22 list here even though it can be also found from above 😊 https://www.ncl.com/sites/default/files/Beverage_Packages_12092022.pdf

Btw just noticed that the package now says that the premium plus package includes ”Energy drinks and ZERO Sugar beverage selection”. As NCL just moved to Coca Cola products and they have the Zero (light) product line does it mean that if you have only the basic free at sea beverage package you are limited to the sugary sodas only? Previously they mentioned the list like Pepsi, Diet Pepsi etc on the beverage package but now the basic beverage package only says ”sodas” and doesn’t aknowledge diet sodas separately 🤔 How nice if only premium beverage package folks can get zero sugar sodas…

I’ll be sure to follow 😁 A ”live from…” could be quite nice also 😅 We are next cruising in April with DH. My current aim is to get as much money out of the premium plus package as possible even though I do not even want to drink so much. Why do I want to do it? Just because. Never make a woman upset by promising unlimited champagne and then do your best to limit it (in just the past few months NCL has removed Moet from the premium plus, blamed supply chain issues for not having enough champagne on board, making it difficult to find a glass of champagne on the ships bars, limited the amount of wine/champagne bottles to one bottle per dinner pp and limited the drinking of such bottles only to the dinner restaurant). Who knows what they limit still before April… If I cannot have my champagne I’ll make sure I’ll order other expensive stuff to the max. It would be much cheaper for NCL to just give me my champagne without a hassle 😏

I am quite sure both NCL and the shorex providers know very well in advance on which days NCL will actually come to PP. They just check the overall Amber Cove schedule and if there are 2 Carnival Corp ships on any given day NCL doesn’t come to PP (unless it’s Sky which can go to Taino Bay). So even though NCL would take your shorex money for PP they don’t really have shorex booked with a provider if that day already has two Carnival Corp ships at Amber Cove. NCL and the shorex providers also very well know that the only way for NCL to get to Amber Cove on days which originally have two Carnival Corp ships is if either one of those Carnival Corp ships has a sudden no show due to whatever. If that would happen the shorex providers can just provide the shorex to NCL that they normally have agreed to the other ship. Most shorex are almost identical regardless of cruiseline.

Oh wow, this is so sad. We had totally thought about getting a bottle of champagne and wine at dinner and carrying whatever might be left to our suite to drink later. But if I understand the above correctly we can still order the bottles at dinner but if we cannot finish them at dinner we just need to leave them to be thrown out. Ok wine you might be able to save for next evening at the restaurant but an opened bottle of champagne…ummmm…no. We do understand that change happens and NCL can change their drink plans whenever they want but the amount of changes they are currently constantly doing in regards of what is included and what is not is ridiculous. If NCL wants to screw us with their constant changes (which they are absolutely allowed to do) we will do our best to screw them. Not wanting a bottle of champagne or the highest possible priced included wine bottle for dinner tonight? We’ll order it anyway and drink one glass from it and leave it. Not wanting any top shelf drinks this evening? Don’t care, will order as much as we can and just leave the drinks untouched. Yes petty, I know, but two can play this game NCL 😁😁😁 Just need to make sure we won’t cause problems for our follow passengers so that we don’t order the ”high on demand difficult to get” top shelf drinks.

In any NCL ship if you are booked to a suite or Haven suite you’ll be taken to that ship’s allocated suite restaurant for lunch. For some ships it will be Cagneys, for some it will be the Haven restaurant if that ship has it. In the smaller NCL ships it might even be something else than Cagneys or Haven restaurant. I remember having suite embarkation day lunch at Il Adagio (La Cucina) when we cruised on NCL Sun around 10 years ago. That restaurant served also as the allocated suite breakfast restaurant during the whole cruise. All of those restaurants serve the standard NCL suite lunch menu regardless of which restaurant the lunch is actually served. If you are cruising in a suite you will be escorted to the ship on embarkation day with other suite passengers in small groups and brought directly to your ship’s allocated suite lunch restaurant.

The above answers are absolutely true if you have booked through NCL US which I do believe you have as your profile states you are from CA. However, just for those who might stumble upon this thread and have booked through NCL EU or UK: whatever price you booked is the price you get. No later discounts or credits are applied. If you cancel you lose your deposit even if you are outside of the final payment. You could though change your cruise to another one and just use your deposit towards that…and then I guess technically you could change yourself back to the original cruise with the now lower price. Not sure though what NCL would say about this as you’d definitely try to do something that is not allowed in EU/UK bookings (get a lower price after already booking) 🤔

The safe could also have been open but the passport inside it still. People sometimes think they have cleared the safe but something is still left behind. Passports are usually of quite dark colour so blend to the safe.

It might also be that your passport was only found by the next passenger in your cabin and only after the cruise had departed. If so it might take a long time to get your passport back as it is currently doing an NCL cruise…

It might also be that there is only one pass available anymore - hence the system allows to book the pass only for one person.

I would just call the normal NCL reservations number and go from there. There is for sure a direct number for lost and found but they don’t want to give it out to everyone who is visiting their website it seems. The reservations folks must be able to find it out for you (or transfer you through to that number) if you explain your situation and tell them that you already got a call from the ship asking you to call lost and found.

Darn, that really is too bad 😔